Sweet Romance11 min read
Pink Cup, Math Notebooks, and the Quiet Tutor
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I lowered my head and smoothed the margin of my math practice sheet, pretending not to hear the whispers behind me.
"Did you see? Hazley actually solved that parabola problem."
"She used to not study at all. What's with the change?"
"Maybe she just wants to impress Sergio."
I smiled without meaning it and opened my textbook. Inside my head was not gossip but a map — formulas, proofs, corners of logic I wanted to master. Whoever Hazley had been in the novel I'd read, she was done. I was here now, and I had decided: I would study.
"Hey, Hazley!" a voice called. Abel — everyone called him Abel but his friends still said 二狗 out of habit — waved me over as if I were the same girl who'd once laughed at homework. He had a rough laugh and a soft heart.
"What do you want?" I asked, keeping my tone light.
"You led the guys to the mess hall at noon?" Abel blinked. "We were hoping you could keep us in line."
"So," I said, smiling more honestly now, "we're going to have a study meeting. At noon. You bring the boys, I bring the plan."
Abel grinned like a kid. "Okay, Hazley."
That day the classroom looked different to me. The blackboard was a battlefield I wanted to win, not a stage for someone else’s drama.
"You're really serious now?" Harper whispered later, leaning across both of our desks.
"Dead serious," I answered. "I don't want the plot to decide who I am."
"Good." Harper's eyes were warm. "I like the new you."
The first heart-flutter came the week I walked a child home from the alley. The child’s coin had been snatched; I chased and flagged down the thieves with nothing but stubbornness and a branch. When the boy’s older brother arrived, he was quietly composed and polite. He introduced himself: "I'm Zhang Maeda."
"Thanks for your help," he said. His voice was calm. "You didn't have to do that."
"It was nothing," I said, cheeks hot. He looked at me like he was counting the small kindnesses I gave without trying. Then, classic in the way heroes in novels are, he smiled — just once — and something in the air shifted.
"I'll see you at school," he added, and he was gone.
That smile lived in my head for days. It was small, but it made the world feel like it could tilt toward me.
Zhang Maeda — Zhang, for short — was the school legend nobody loudly admired. He did everything quietly and well. "He never brags," Abel told me. "He just does."
When Zhang agreed to tutor me — at our headmaster Henry Cooper's gentle suggestion and after Clifford Schmidt, my father's friend, quietly spoke to Zhang's teacher — my chest felt light.
"Every evening, after self-study," Zhang told me the first time. "Three sessions a week. We'll focus on weak points."
"Okay." I swallowed. "Thank you."
"You're welcome."
That was the second flutter: the way he inclined his head toward me, like my willingness mattered. He arranged practice sheets, annotated steps in a patient hand, and sometimes, in the quiet of the corner study room, reached across the table to point out an algebraic trick. His fingers brushed mine just briefly as he closed a page. I felt electric.
"You're improving," he would say, eyes steady.
"Only because you're making me," I replied, pretending not to blush.
The third heart-flutter arrived in winter, after a long evening of problem sets. It was cold outside. I shivered. Zhang took off his jacket without asking and draped it over my shoulders.
"Don't catch a cold," he said simply.
I looked up at him. "Thanks," I whispered.
He did not smile that time; he kept a small, determined expression instead. But the look in his eyes said it all: he noticed me in the way that made me careful with my heart.
Of course, not everyone cheered my change. Julissa Cruz — who played the original heroine in the novel — and Sergio O'Brien, who fit the tall, moody type like a glove, watched me like wolves watching a lamb learn to run. Their whispers started as sidelines, then became a current pushing through the school corridors: "Hazley is pretending. She begged Zhang for exam answers."
"Isn't she the one who blew up the pink cup scene?" someone hissed.
"She must have cheated to climb so fast," another voice said.
Rumors are nasty things; they don't need much to grow.
"Leave her alone," I told Harper, who came with suspicion for me.
"Why would they do that?" Harper asked.
"Because people like drama," I said. "Because it's easier than truth."
I kept working. I kept meeting Zhang after school. He was quiet about praise, but he started to hand me corrected exams with neat comments, and the scores climbed. My rank rose like a tide.
"From three hundred to thirty-six," Mr. Cooper said to me in his office one day, his voice both surprised and proud. "Keep this up, Hazley. Your family will be proud."
My family was proud. My father, Clifford, even negotiated an evening job for Zhang's mother through his company; he said it out loud like a promise. "You helped my daughter. It's the least we can do," he told Zhang with a heavy but sincere tone. Zhang protested at first; he's the sort of person who won't take things without thought. But pride and need made compromises possible, and in the end, he accepted politely.
People began to look at me differently. Some still sneered. Some offered a tentative nod. I kept my head down and answered questions like I always had — slowly, with effort, with notes that felt more like maps than masks.
The cup incident — the pink commemorative cup — became my small trophy. I had asked Clifford's assistant, Adrian Mohammed, to obtain one from a local café because I couldn't bear to see Julissa and Sergio pretend like they owned everything pretty and perfect. I placed it on the bench beside me in gym class by accident and watched the rumor mill sputter into life when someone noticed the "couple set." Later, at the drama rehearsal, I purposely "accidentally" knocked over Julissa's cup and handed her a brand new pink one.
"Here," I told her. "For you and Sergio."
She blinked. "What are you doing?"
"Payback's petty," I said, and walked away. It was small, and it made me laugh like a private joke. Zhang watched from the doorway and laughed, too, softly.
"You're not small," he said later.
"Am I big now?" I teased.
"You're you," he answered.
While we studied, the whispers grew meaner. "She stole Zhang's attention," they said. "She used him to climb ranks." Painful as it was, I tried to ignore them. People love a easy story over a long truth.
One afternoon, the rumor escalated. The school bulletin board had slanderous notes. My name, my tutor's name, petty accusations. It was everywhere by the next morning.
"Who would do this?" Harper asked as we stood in the corridor.
"Somebody who wants attention," I said. "Or someone afraid."
Then the whisper changed to an accusation: "She cheated." The accusation attempted to shrink me to the size of those whispers. Instead, it made something in me resolve like cooled iron: I would not let lies be the last word.
I started to collect evidence. Old messages, passing witnesses, the barista at the café who saw Julissa buy a set of matching cups the month before — small things, but they formed a line.
And then an opportunity came. Our final school assembly before graduation was the prize-giving. They would announce scholarships, awards, and honor the students. Everyone would be there.
I sat through it with my palms tight around the program. Zhang sat next to me, quiet as ever, his hand occasionally brushing mine like a lighthouse beacon.
"Are you sure?" Zhang asked in a low voice.
"Yes," I whispered. "It's time."
When they called my name to receive the scholarship — "For extraordinary improvement and community contribution" — I walked up on stage with calm feet.
The auditorium was packed. Students leaned forward. The principal's voice echoed. Cameras flashed. Julissa and Sergio were there in the front row, their faces carefully composed. The rumor-cloud around them made them look like they expected applause.
I took the microphone.
"I want to thank my tutors, my teachers, my father, and my friends," I began. "But there is something I must say."
Every head shifted. The room quieted like a lake hearing the first stone.
"There have been lies about how I came to improve. There have been accusations that I cheated, that someone else did the work for me, and that I used a private relationship to climb ranks."
Julissa's lips twitched. Sergio's jaw tightened.
"I have the exam papers I took in those months," I said, and the cameras turned toward the table. "I have the corrected copies, months of messages with Zhang Maeda discussing problems, and I have witnesses to people who spread rumors for attention."
I lifted my stack of printed pages. The auditorium hummed. I had decided to make the moment public — because secrecy lets lies grow roots.
"These messages here," I said, "were saved from a chat where some students arranged to plant notes and spread a rumor that I cheated. They called it a joke. This 'joke' went in front of many students and teachers and turned into a public harm."
I walked a measured step to the edge of the stage and turned to face the front row. "Julissa Cruz, Sergio O'Brien, did you find spreading that rumor amusing?"
Julissa's face had been pale. "Hazley, you're—"
"—defaming us!" Sergio cut in, voice cold. "You had friends plant things too. Who's to say you didn't engineer your own image?"
Abel — who's usually full of loud loyalty — suddenly stood up from the audience. "No," he said loud enough for everyone to hear, "they told me to stick notes in the bathrooms and hand them out. I didn't think anyone would take it so far. I thought it was just a prank."
A murmur went through the auditorium. "Abel—" I said, but I let him speak.
"They promised I'd look cool," Abel continued, face red. "They said it would make people talk about us. I didn't know they'd make you look like a cheat."
Julissa's expression changed. It flickered through stages: irritation, confusion, then a hard denial. "You liar!" she snapped at Abel. "You were supposed to be quiet."
"It was a joke," Sergio said, voice trying to stay cold. "None of it was meant to actually hurt her."
"Then why did you leave slander on the bulletin board last night?" I asked, each word precise. "Why were you in the corridor passing out notes the week before exams, Julissa?"
"I—" she stammered. Her poised veneer cracked. "I thought— it was to make us the center of attention. I didn't think anyone would believe it."
"People believed it," Harper said from the audience, voice high with scorn. "You seeded suspicion and watched it grow. You both watched Hazley struggle while you whispered."
A camera near the press table clicked. The auditorium's hush became heavy, like rain after thunder.
"Do you understand what you did?" I asked them both quietly, though the microphone ensured everyone heard.
Julissa's composure collapsed into a small, incredulous sound. "It wasn't supposed to go this far. I'm sorry." Her apology was small like a crumpled paper bag.
"Sorry isn't an eraser," the principal said, walking forward now. "We will investigate this thoroughly."
They stood, now small and oddly exposed. Sergio's face flushed from anger to pale confusion to a strange, pleading look I hadn't seen before.
"This isn't public shaming," the principal continued, "but the harm has been public. We will hold a hearing in the next three days, and until then, there will be consequences if evidence shows this was malicious."
The crowd's reactions were immediate. "What? They did that?" someone whispered. Another student hissed: "I can't believe it." Phones came out. The auditorium buzzed. Some students took photos. Some whispered supportively to me.
Julissa's hands trembled. "I didn't mean to hurt—" she started, then stopped as she saw the faces around her. Students who once smiled at her glanced away. A girl I didn't know turned to her friend and said, "She always used people to get grounded. Now she's got nothing."
Sergio's transformation was cleaner to watch. He had carried himself like a king in small school politics — brooding, aloof, always poised. Now he was exposed, no theater left. He tried to form sentences that sounded innocent and then defensive, then broken.
"Maybe we take this too far?" he tried to say. "It's a school prank."
A murmur rose. "Not a prank." "That's mean." "You both knew what you were doing."
I held the microphone. The light in the auditorium was bright enough that I could see each face — curiosity, pity, shame, anger. The most painful look came not from Julissa or Sergio but from those who had treated me badly and now realized they had joined a bandwagon.
"You used whispers," I said plainly. "You used other people's loyalty. You put notes in places you knew teachers would find and let the rumor grow. Abel did not have to do it. He was asked. You asked."
Julissa crumpled. Sergio's jaw trembled visibly.
"I accept apologies if they are real," I added. "Apologies are not enough if they don't have change behind them."
Later, after the assembly, the hearing took place. The details were long. The disciplinary board — with Mr. Cooper presiding — listened to witnesses. Phones and photos were examined. When the conclusion came, it was public and stinging in its own due-process way.
"Julissa Cruz and Sergio O'Brien will complete a public apology in assembly, serve six weeks of community service for school events, and their leadership positions will be suspended. Additionally, they will attend a mediation and restorative justice program to repair the harm done."
The punishment meted by the school was not theatrical cruelty but it was public. The punishment was precise and humiliating because it took their public masks away, step by step.
On the day of the apology — three weeks later — the whole school crowded into the auditorium again. The air tasted of cheap flowers and collective attention.
"On behalf of myself and Sergio, I am sorry," Julissa said into the microphone, voice small and edged with new fear. "I should not have started the rumor, and I am sorry for the hurt I caused Hazley and others."
Sergio stood before the crowd with his shoulders drawn in. "I participated in spreading falsehoods. I thought it would be a joke. It wasn't. I'm sorry."
People recorded. Some students left their seats and walked to Hazley, offering small gestures — a pat, a hand squeeze. Some older students who had once snubbed me now smiled as if to say they were on my side.
I watched Julissa's face go through the stages: smug — surprised — denial — collapse — plea. She begged, "Please understand I didn't mean—" and then realized there wasn't a soft place for those words to land. The audience responded with a cool mixture of curiosity and scorn. A few students clapped politely when the principal finished his brief remarks, but most looked on with the kind of judgment that forms when trust is broken.
The spectacle hurt Julissa. It was not the performance of a villain in a book; it was a student seeing a small world of favors and status turn limpid and useless. She left the auditorium with her head down.
Sergio, who had always worn indifference like armor, found the armor rusted. People who once envied him now whispered about how his posture had slackened. He tried to meet people's eyes and found, instead, a mirror of his own choices. For someone used to being listened to, suddenly silence was the loudest thing.
Abel, meanwhile, apologized to me in front of the group earlier and then helped coordinate the paperwork that proved who had handed out the notices. He avoided me with a shy, guilt-filled face until I told him, "You did the right thing coming clean."
"I was a coward," he said. "I am sorry."
After the hearing, the aftermath lasted weeks. Gossip shifted away from me and toward them — not out of pleasure but because the school needed to talk about what had been broken. Students who had joined the bandwagon felt shame. Teachers spoke in classes about responsibility and the harm of hearsay. The pink cup, once a token of petty games, became something else in people's memories: the moment when a rumor met daylight.
Zhang stood next to me through it all. He never pushed me to speak, but he never left my side either. He continued to tutor me gently, and sometimes he would catch my wrist in the corridors and squeeze, a quiet anchor.
"You're okay," he would say, and the simplicity of it felt like a salve.
By graduation, the story had softened into one of many school legends. Some students forgave Julissa and Sergio; some didn't. What mattered to me was simpler. I had stacks of corrected exams and a scholarship and a life mapped out: chemistry in university, research to do, a path away from petty plots and toward a real contribution.
On the last day of school, Zhang took my hand in the courtyard.
"Would you—" he began, and then laughed gently. "No. bad opening."
"What did you want to say?" I asked.
"I want to keep being with you," he said. "As a friend, as a tutor, maybe more."
"Okay," I answered without thinking.
He smiled that quiet smile again. "Can I ask you later? For the rest of your life?"
"Yes," I said, and it was true.
Years later, when I am a researcher and he is building his own quiet skyscraper of success, we will tell the story differently. We'll laugh at the pink cup and the silly theatrics that once seemed mighty. We'll point to the notebooks in my office — my old math practice books with margins full of Zhang's notes — and say, "Remember when this decided everything?"
But on that final day of high school, I clasped my scholarship certificate and a small pink cup someone had given me as a joke, and I listened to the late sun warm Zhang's hair.
"Promise me one thing," he said quietly.
I looked up. "What's that?"
"Keep that old math notebook," he said, touching the faded spine. "Carry it with you."
I laughed, because the book smelled of erasable ink and late nights. "I will," I said.
And that was a promise that felt different from all the others I had ever made.
The End
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